Hoodsman: Blackstone Edge

by Smith, Skye

  "Not a thousand, half mounted."

  "Like you said. Every Norman in the Marches. Not a large army, but enough. Damnation." Actually Bleddyn said many more flowery Welsh phases after damnation, but they meant the same. He finished his breakfast, slowly, thinking.

  "I know of a FitzOsbern," Raynar said. "He was the Sheriff in York a few years ago. And there was an Ilbert DeLacy on the River Aire at Pontefract. He was the bastard that harrowed half of Yorkshire. The man deserves an arrow in the back."

  "Hugh is his father," replied Bleddyn. "And Montgomery, he is a bad one too. Some say he is as rich as William's half brother Odo, just because he was so helpful to William back in '66 on the road to Hastings. I don't know this Gerbod."

  One of the English burghers who was sitting next to Raynar spoke up. "William came to Chester with Gerbod two years ago, but we wouldn't open the gates for them. Gerbod was supposed to become the new lord of Chester. Hah."

  "Is he dangerous and rich like Montgomery and FitzOsbern?" asked the Prince.

  "At the time I thought he looked like a nasty, backstabbing snot, so he is in good company. The gossip is that he was the first man to fuck Mathilde, you know, William's wife. William rescued her from him, and then forgot to return her to her father, the Count of Flanders, and instead betrothed her by rape for himself. Gerbod must have some strong hold on William, to be given Chester, rather than a shallow grave. Eh, what do you think?"

  "I think we are out of here and back to the Peaks," said John. "Eat up Ray. This William-in-Chester thing is going from bad to worse."

  "John has a point," said Bleddyn. "Rather than risk making two false steps, I think I will withdraw back into Wales to see what happens. Let the Cheshiremen stay and deal with William, if they want Chester so badly."

  "Just a thought," said Raynar quietly, and then dropped his voice even lower. "If every Norman in the Marches is riding to Chester, then who is left in their baileys to the south. Just a thought."

  Bleddyn gave him a slow wink, and then stood and yelled out the order to break camp and head for the border.

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  The Hoodsman - Blackstone Edge by Skye Smith

  Chapter 12 - Tracing a missing treasure with Gregos in Winchester in July 1101

  Risto was sitting next to Raynar and listening intently to the stories told in Greek. He had come in late from visiting one of the palace women and had missed the tales of the Great Harrowing, but he had heard about the ambush at Blackstone Edge. He urged Raynar to continue, but Gregos was nodding in his seat and the candles were low, and Raynar thought it better to stop.

  At the sudden quiet, Gregos looked up and cleared his throat. "I will tell my clerks that the numbers in the Domesday Book are to be believed. I may even explain to them why, though it is not easy to believe. How could any man, King or General, order the starvation and freezing of hundreds of thousands of farmers? The Great Harrowing you say. I haven't heard it mentioned before."

  "No one knew the full effect of the clearances until the next spring," Raynar said quietly. "By then it was too late to help. The folk were all dead. Oh, the Pope in Rome threatened William with excommunication because of it, but he settled for huge grants of the now cleared land on which to build monasteries and churches.

  I suppose the historians will call William's murder of so many innocents as an act of desperation. If he would have been satisfied with the name of 'King' and the rule of everything south of the Thames, then none of this would have happened. Instead he over-extended the reach of his armies into the North, and many times almost lost everything.

  At the River Aire, then to a Danish invasion, then at Blackstone Edge. Each time he came very close to losing both his army and his life. And yet, the fates kept him alive, and foiled every army that stood against him."

  Risto interrupted, "I never knew that William came that close to losing his army."

  "The histories were commissioned by his half-brother Odo, so such things were not mentioned."

  "Saved by the English weather one month, and then almost killed by it the next. That must have caused some talk of miracles," chuckled Risto.

  "At the River Aire, he was saved by the incompetence of the English lords. They had no idea how to turn a camp into a fortress. They did not know what the other armies were doing, friend or foe. They had no spies reporting to them. They needed someone like Thorold to run the campaign for them. Not the battles, just the organization."

  "The destruction of the northern villages is also not in the histories," said Gregos while he tidied his papers and put them under his arm.

  "It is in some. The ones written by the old church, the Greek churchmen , not the Romanized ones.".

  "So how many folk died?" asked Gregos.

  "I have no way of knowing. Even your Domesday Book was not compiled until fifteen years later. Farmers' houses are made of materials that become the earth again in two years. The ferry clerk at Selby counted over twenty thousand, but those were the ones who were still alive, and just those that crossed at Selby. Perhaps the dead were the lucky ones. The survivors lived out their lives being abused by slave masters. Worse, the abundance of slaves was the ruination of every freeman in every shire."

  "What William did was typical of Norman wars," sighed Gregos. "They destroy the farms and the farmers and use the terror it creates as a weapon against armies. They have done the same around the Mediterranean and especially in the Holy Land. The Roman church allows it so long as the Normans confess afterwards and pay in coin and land for forgiveness. One wonders if the source of such great evil was not the Norman knights but the Romanized church."

  "What they did in the Danelaw was worse than the Holy Land," replied Raynar. "You are a man of books, from a culture that is written and is preserved in that writing. Can you understand the effect of a harrowing on a culture that is not written down, an oral culture. To lose so many ealders was to lose the culture, the learning, and the ways. In your Cordoba, the equivalent would be to burn all the books, all the scrolls, all the libraries and then to kill all the learned men."

  Raynar let the full meaning of his words hang in the air. "For me Christmas will always be a time of mourning. The decisions made at that Norman feast in York in '69 doomed the English freeman to serfdom. By taking the Danegeld and withdrawing his fleet, the King of Denmark became a petty king, and the north of England became nothing more than a wasteland. It served only as a barrier to slow invasions from the north. The Norman equivelent of Hadrian's Wall. Hundreds of miles of empty land."

  "How so a wall against invasions?" asked Risto.

  "Armies can travel long distances only if they can steal food from the locals. When there are no locals, they cannot travel those distances."

  "Whatever became of your friend the Bishop Aethelwine of Dun Holm? Wasn't he the man who first taught you Greek?" asked Risto.

  "He died in his chains, but he saved most of the relics before they caught him. He was replaced as bishop by a Norman who was granted the powers of a prince, much like the Earls on the Welsh border, in order to balance the power of Cospatrick in the North." Raynar looked at the other two men. "I think it is time for bed."

  "First tell me what became of the rest of William's army. The ones that didn't make it over Blackstone edge," Risto pleaded.

  "Ah yes, the infantry and carters and mercenaries. They turned back to Yorkshire and in small groups tried to make it south to seek passage back to the continent. I doubt if any of them made it out of Yorkshire, never mind through Sherwood. There was no food for them, and no one would help them, and everywhere the local folk saught vengeance against them. By the way, the Reeve of Chester was hung for forcing William to sleep outside the gates. Chester became a Norman town and Cheshire was picked clean. Now bed."

  "Oh no, not yet," the aging Greek treasury officer reached for another set of scrolls. "While I have you here to myself, I was hoping that you could help me solve a mystery that has us baffled in th
e Treasury."

  Raynar motioned for him to continue.

  "We have accounts that show that King Harold Godwinson took over a treasury from his predecessor, King Edward, that was tenfold the size of the treasury that was captured by King William the First. Such wealth can not just disappear and I have a clerk attempting to account for it. As you were with Harold and his Earls in those days when William invaded, I was wondering if perhaps you could provide me with some clues."

  "Gregos," Raynar sighed, "I was but eighteen or nineteen in '66 when Harold was butchered defending Hastings road. Besides, I was a simple porter working for an abbey's lead business. Kings do not discuss treasury issues with peasants," he stopped in mid sentence. Yesterday King Henry had been doing exactly that with him. "Well, not in those days."

  "But you kept the company of kings and earls during those battles, including Edwin, Morcar, even Edith's Uncle Edgar who was king for a few weeks before William was crowned," coaxed Gregos. "Think back. Did they say nothing? A treasure of that size in silver could not be moved due to the bulk. In gold it would be two chests, each too heavy to be moved by fewer than four men. If there were jewels, of course it would be smaller and lighter. "

  Raynar sighed again, but began to collect his memories. He had many vivid memories of this treasure, so he must be careful not to say too much. He must play the part of a peasant passing gossip along. After all, Gregos, underneath all his fine titles, was nothing more than a very talented tax collector.

  "Harold's queen," Raynar said in a tone of innocent helpfulness, "was Edwin's sister and I only had knowledge of her through Hereward. I was never certain, but I think that in '66 after Harold was butchered, Edwin sent Hereward to Winchester to make sure she was safe."

  He lowered his voice. "She was at Winchester when Harold was butchered. Winchester was the capital of the kingdom as well as Harold's family seat and held the kingdom's treasury. However, then, as now, much of the treasure would have been in London because London was so well defended.

  William split his army when he marched on London in '66, and part of it marched to Winchester to capture the treasury there. You say that they captured some small part only, so most of Winchester's treasure must have been moved with the Queen.

  I believe she fled with Harold's mother and his sons to Exeter, so the treasure most likely went with them." Raynar thought some more. "Yes, that makes sense. Harold's mother funded many of the original rebellions in the South against William. When the rebels failed, Harold's sons chartered Irish ships to raid the south west coast and it was always said that they earned hugely from those raids. It could be that the raids were actually staged to rescue the treasure."

  "Ah," said Gregos, "so that would account for one large part of the treasury. The Winchester part."

  "Certainly Edwin and Morcar never seemed to have enough wealth to be called a treasure," added Raynar. "However," he put his hands over his eyes and thought back, "yes, Harold had part of his treasury with him when he came to York to do battle with Harald of Norway. Call it an army treasury if you will.

  Armies are expensive to keep, and silver coin is always required. When he raced to Hastings to meet William, he went by way of London, so he would have taken his army treasury, plus whatever treasure been taken from the defeated Norse army at Stamford or from the Norse ships at Riccall.

  Edwin and Morcar stayed longer in the north to mop up after the battle at Stamford, so they started south some days after Harold. The bulky wealth of weapons and armour and ships would have been left in Yorkshire for Morcar's agents to deal with, but Harold would have taken any portable treasure with his army when it went to block Hastings’s road."

  "Continue with that thinking, Raynar. Follow the path where ever it leads," encouraged Gregos.

  "At the battle of Hastings’s road at Senlac, Earls Edwin and Morcar were late coming with the reinforcements. Harold had taken all the professional warriors with him, and they had taken all the horses so they could race South to block William's army. Earl Edgar, however, was with Harold. He was given charge of guarding the camp and the horses at Senlac.

  Edgar actually did quite well at that task, considering he was perhaps sixteen at the time. At least as many of William's knights were killed trying to take the camp, as died in the actual battle before Harold and his brothers were slaughtered. Edgar's camp guards protected the surviving lords and huscarls and got them away, and to London. I suppose then, that we must assume that Edgar would have arrived in London with both army treasures, the English and the Norse."

  "And taken the army treasure to the treasury in London?" asked Gregos.

  "How would I know that? It strikes me that you should be asking these questions of Edgar."

  "Until he returns from the Holy Land, I will be satisfied with your answers," replied Gregos.

  "Edgar was young and was dedicated to Harold. If Edgar escaped to London with that much treasure, he would, most as like, have taken it to London's treasury for safe-keeping. Edgar was not much of a general, but he always understood the power of wealth, so he would have used his own guards at the treasury."

  "Perhaps that is another reason Edgar was offered the crown instead of Edwin. Because he controlled the treasury," offered Gregos. "No, not if he was just sixteen."

  "It could well be, for when he was offered the crown, the entire treasury became Edgar's anyway. He must have moved it quickly out of London because he was not king for long. William raced to London once he was offered the crown, and he would have made for the treasury at once."

  "So what did Edgar do with the treasure once it left London?" Gregos asked, more of himself than of Raynar.

  Raynar thought back. "When William next left London he went back to Normandy and he took Edgar, Edwin, and Morcar with him. The Earls would not have taken treasure with them, so the treasure would still be hidden and guarded by those loyal to Edgar."

  "You can understand now why the Treasury is interested in this mystery," Gregos whispered, "it could be hidden still. Have you ever wondered what becomes of all the treasure that has been hidden somewhere safe through the ages, and that safe place has then been forgotten, and the treasure therefore lost?"

  "When William returned from Normandy, he brought the Earls with him. They did not trust William's half brother, Odo, so they did a runner. Edgar, his family, and the earls sailed by merchant Cog to Spalding, in the Wash. Actually they were on their way further North to get safely out of Odo's reach, but got forced into the Wash by Norman longships.

  "Do you think that this great treasure was on board that Cog?" asked Risto, suddenly alert. "Oh this is exciting. How great did you say this treasure was? Is there a 'finders keepers' rule here in England?"

  Raynar smiled inwardly at Risto's enthusiasm. "As I recall, they berthed Cog downstream from Spalding because they did not want it to bottom out at low tide. The Noble passengers from the Cog and the seamen from the local Frisian ships that had escorted her into port, were all put up at the Countess's manor for a feast."

  Gregos was making notes. "Which countess was this?"

  "Countess Beatrice of Spalding," Raynar replied. "But she is dead. Her daughter Lucy is now the Countess. Anyway they did leave a guard on the ships. A few men on each of the small Frisian ships, but at least twenty shieldmen on the big Cog. After the feast, the seamen from Cog returned to their ship, while the Frisians stayed at the manor as guards."

  Gregos broke into the thought, "Why leave such a large guard on an empty Cog?"

  "Because it wasn't empty," suggested Risto. His face was flushed and he was grinning ear to ear.

  "Whose guard was left on the Cog?" asked Gregos.

  "They were all Edwin’s men," replied Raynar. "He took only one personal guard to the manor, and that man was killed by Edgar's traitorous guards when they tried to kill the Earls."

  "That is enough, Raynar, thank you," interrupted Gregos. "Mystery solved. Edgar hid the bulk of the treasure in London and then transported it north
on the merchant Cog. Such a treasure would explain why Malcolm of Scotland always supported Edgar in his every endeavour."

  "Edgar always was a canny bugger," said Raynar. "Staying at Beatrice's manor was a decoy to prompt their enemies to attack the manor rather than the Cog. It was the odious Odo who sent the longships after the Cog. Their orders were to seize the ship and its cargo, and kill all aboard."

  Gregos had a wide smile. "So my entry in the Book will be that Harold's treasury was split three ways. A tenth captured by William, three tenths captured by Harold's sons, and six tenths taken by Edgar to Scotland. " He stopped talking because Raynar's eyes were closed. He motioned to Risto to throw a blanket over the man to keep him warm.

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  The Hoodsman - Blackstone Edge by Skye Smith

  Chapter 13 - Preparing for the Danish fleet in Spalding in April 1070

  Raynar's voice was rising at men who were all much older and wealthier than he, "No, you don't want them here. Have you not been listening to my stories. This winter I was on the River Aire, and the Wharfe, and the Ouse, and the Humber. I learned my lessons well. Don't place your faith in English Earls, and don't trust the Danish Jarls not to be bribed.

  The English Earls attack when they should retreat and retreat when they should attack. The Danish Jarls can be bought for treasure. William has bought them off with a Danegeld once. He will buy them off again. Do not risk your folk and your land and your lives." He always became frustrated when dealing with thick headed nobles. His angry words sounded worse in the gutteral Daneglish tongue, which was what everyone was speaking.

  The meeting had been ongoing all morning. All the English lords from the areas around Peterburgh, Burna and Spalding were sitting in the Great Hall at the estate of Countess Beatrice of Spalding. Her husband Thorold, the one time Shire Reeve of Lincolnshire, had invited them.

  King Sweyn of Denmark had arrived to take personal control of his fleet of three hundred ships. He had reneged on the deal made between his brother, Jarl Osbern, and King William. The Jarl had taken the payment of the Danegeld, and had allowed the Normans to loot, burn, and kill almost every Daneglish village from the River Humber to the River Tweed.